The Campaign Builder's Guild

Hi everyone.  As I did last year, I'm going to be running a Halloween game this year, and like last year's game this one will be set in my "Spaceships, Sixguns, and Cyclopean Horrors" setting, a mash-up of Lovecraftian horror and the space western.  The game will use a very simple, easy-to-learn system with absolutely no prior experience necessary.  Nominally the whole adventure should take a single session to complete, but knowing me it might take a couple in the end; you don't need to commit to multiple sessions, however, or even to playing a whole session, as the whole thing is meant to be very casual and friendy.  We can work out scheduling etc in this thread.

If you're not sure if this is your cup of absinthe-laced tea or not, there's a link in my signature to some game logs of two games I ran in this setting and another game sparkletwist ran using the setting.

Here's a little bit on the setting, and an introductory short story I wrote for it, for those unfamiliar with the setting or for those who need a refresher:

[spoiler][ic=Spaceships, Sixguns, and Cyclopean Horrors]For centuries humanity wallowed in its blissful ignorance, fighting its idiotic and futile little wars, until under the auspices of illumination and science they took to the stars and the Great Beyond and made the ends of the universe their frontier. Out in the black abyss of space they found whole star systems of planets, asteroid belts and clouds of stellar gas rich in the elements they'd squabbled over so wretchedly on their insignificant Earth. Feverish with excitement and swollen in hubris with their own technological magnificence and the promise of spoils beyond their wildest dream, humankind began its great Diaspora, scattering itself across the galaxy. Mining colonies and thriving boomtowns spread to the systems of Arcturus, Baalbo, Xoth, Betelgeuse, and Hydra. Blood was still spilt, spattered across the dusty, cratered plains of distant moons in showdowns beneath the high noons of binary suns.

But ore and gas was not all that humanity found amongst the stars.

Something else was waiting.

As they dug into the depths of ancient and alien worlds, humanity found traces - ruins, the husk-cities of departed civilizations, inhuman and unfathomable. Still they delved; ever their reach exceeded their grasp. Until, plundering some tenebrous little world beneath the dying light of seven ebbing suns, the Crawling Chaos emerged from his prison...

Face down a shoggoth in a crumbling temple of Lrogg on the fourth moon of L'gh'yx (Uranus). Saddle up your worm-mount and hijack a Shantak-drawn caravan on the fiery plains of Haddath. Converse with the Insects of Shaggai in one of their phantastic hive-cities. Fight rangewars over herds of crustacean cattle. Uncover the secrets of the Yith with the Necronomicon in one hand and a six-shooter in the other. Brawl in the saloons of New Arkham City. Blip into hyperspace to escape the unthinkable jaws of the Great Old Ones themselves.[/ic]
[ic=Slang]Most people in the civilized universe know English and at least a healthy smattering of Rl'yehian.  The names of the Great Old Ones and the Elder Gods are often used as oaths in the same way that historically Christians swore by God or the Devil.

It is also very common for religious or superstitious individuals to gesticulate to draw the Elder Sign in the air to ward off evil or misfortune, much as a Catholic might make the sign of the cross.

bug: any insectoid or crustacean alien i.e. Mi-Go, Yakubians, etcetera

Cthulhu take the hindmost: devil take the hindmost

ebumna-n'ghft: hellhole, shithole, bad place, pit, dark place

fm'latggh-'bthnk: "starshit"; crap, stuff

ftaghu'ebumna: whore or loose women; with an additional 'a' (pluralization), refers to a brothel; literally, "skin pit."

ftaghu'fhalma: madame, procuress, brothel-keeper

hlirgh: heretic, blasphemer

hupadgh'Shub-Niggurath: spawn of the Black Goat in the Woods with a Thousand Young; a colloquialism for a low-born person, trash

G.O.O.: Great Old One

grah'n: worm; pejorative

iä!: similar to the Cantonese "aiya!" or the English "shucks" – showing disappointment, dismay, or mild annoyance

ilyaa'hrii - arrogant, proud, hubristic, cocky

lamprey: parasite, lazy individual, slippery or dishonest person

li'hee-syha'h-n'ghft: on pain of death and eternal damnation; "believe me when I say..."

li'hee-sll'ha-n'gha: a threat to kill someone

lw'nafh-shogg: hyperspatial turbulence; come to generally mean "chaos" or "disturbance"

mnahn'-gof'n: fool, idiot, naïve individual, ignorant person; literally, "worthless child"

mnahn'nw: derogatory word for simpleton i.e. the mentally handicapped

nafl-hupadgh : bastard, illegitimate, base-born

Nodens' beard!: oath; exclamation of surprise or amazement

n'gha h'geb: exclamation of anguish; "we're doomed"; literally "death is here"

Nyarlathotetp's own luck: the devil's own luck

nyth-shogg: ne'er-do-well, blackguard, servant of evil

or'luhnyth: liar

right-as-R'lyeh: right-as-rain

sll'ha-nglui: loose woman, trollop, slut

sgn'wahl: shack up, get friendly

subby: pejorative meaning subhuman, i.e. a Ghoul, Deep One, mutant, etcetera

throd: fuck; also throdding, throdded, etcetera

vulgtlagln-syha'h: pray to the gods; "we're in deep shit"

wagh'nyth: slave; servile person

ygotha'ai  n'gha gof'nn: emphatic curse, a great way to start a fight; literally "I wish the call of death for your children"

y'hah: amen; thank the gods; verily

ysll'ha ephai c'ai: I hope to speak to you again, a common goodbye; literally "I invite after this we speak"

ytharanak c'ai: the proper response to the above; literally "I promise we will speak"[/ic]
[ic=The Last Voyage of The Unnameable]The aether-craft The Unnameable squirmed through the tenebrous nether-dimensions of hyperspace, boring through the interstitial membranes of reality like some gigantic worm, its cannonry dangling from its bulk like ganglia, the black globule of its cockpit staring into the abyss like some huge and monstrous eye. Deep within the ship, past layers of hull and shielding, Captain James Howard was cleaning his guns meticulously with an oil-rag. They lay disassembled on the scarred wooden table, each component carefully positioned, gleaming in the sputtering light overhead. Suddenly The Unnameable shifted, lurching in hyperspace: probably the eldritch resonance of some massive object in real space, radiating into the twilight abysses of the aether. The vessel bucked; the precisely laid-out bits and pieces Howard had so painstakingly arrayed rolled off the table and clattered to the dull iron floor. An alarm blared discordantly over the ship's speaker-system.

"Mnahn' hlirgh hupadgh n'ghft!" He swore. "Bloody aether-winds..." He clutched at his vociferator-cube and radioed the bridge. "Pnoth, what's it doin' out there?"

"Spot of turbulence, Captain," the ghoul pilot croaked back. The troglodytic folk made ideal crew out in the blackness of space, even if their diet was off-putting to their human comrades. "Probably a brown dwarf. Right as R'lyeh now, though." The alarm had cut out.

"Good. How far are we from Whatley's World?"

"Aether-currents are blowin' us into some ugly lw'nafh-shogg... been a bit delayed. We should be pulling into the Miskatonic System in four or five hours. Pnoth out."

Howard muttered an oath to Nodens. In five hours the half-life of their cargo might have decayed significantly. He stared at the pieces of his guns scattered across the floor and scowled. No sense in laying them out for another patch of turbulence to interrupt him again. Still mumbling curses he stalked from the armory and down the hall to the engine room, ignoring the gibbering shrieks of the Byakhee cattle they'd picked up from some Tcho-Tcho nyth-shogg back in the Thyoph Chain.

The engine room was a mess. Shaalba and Zo were scrabbling amidst a jumble of detritus, the sleek Ulthari woman and her bumbling apprentice mired in a forest of black cables, wreathed in sepia steam.

"What in all of the Great Beyond is going on here then?" Howard demanded, staring at the chaos with wide-eyed horror.

"Just reassembling the secondary drive, Captain," Shaalba purred, her feline tail twitching round a wrench. "There were some problems with the M-filter. Thought you'd want us to be thorough."

"Forget that for now. We need some more speed. You still have some of that ichor we snatched out in the Gray Gulf?"

"A couple tubes. You want me to pump that fm'latggh-'bthnk into the primary drive?"

"Yar. We need to get to New Arkham before those crystals die on us. Lucretia won't pay for a bunch of black rocks, even if we did fight off a swarm of Nagaae to get hold of them."

"Aye, sir. We're going to have to replace our diffuser coils, though. I've been telling you..."

"I know, I know, they're three months old. We'll get new ones from Kelley in Red Hook."

"That swindling lamprey? Unnameable'll be lucky to get off the ground with any of his parts in her entrails..."

"I know he's a thievin' Martian con-man but his prices are the best. We gotta eat, Shaal."

"Well I'm testing them out before we install them. Things'll probably rupture once we enter hyperspace anyway, but Dagon knows I'll have warned you. Now get out of my engine room, we've got enough clutter in here without a gormless mnahn'-gof'n putting his nose where it doesn't belong!"

He chuckled despite himself, his amusement outweighing his vexation. He turned to head back towards the armory when the ship lurched again, nearly knocking him off his feet. The alarm kindled back to life. Howard grabbed the voxiferator.

"Pnoth, what the hell am I paying you for you mangy maggot-ridden--"

"It's not just turbulence Captain.  Something just hit the ship, pushed us into a Dislocation eddy; we got shunted somewhere into hyperspace. I think you'd better come up here and take a look at thi--"

The radio went dead: no screams, no garbled raving, just a burst of static and then silence. Howard banged the voxiferator against the wall, snarled Pnoth's name. No response. The rest of the ship was equally silent.

He reached down to his belt to draw a gun that wasn't there, swore when he realized that all his weapons were lying in pieces on the armory floor. He crept down the corridor, staring at the hexagonal door at the far end that led to the cockpit.

He made it halfway down the passage when the door hissed open. The creature that stood framed in the doorway was a thing out of a nightmare: gaunt and leathery, glowing with sallow, hideous light. How it had gotten into the ship he had no idea. In one clawed hand it clutched a gnawed limb; its maw dripped blood and black spittle on the floor.  Its face was eyeless, its jaw unhinged, serpentine.  The horror made a wet, guttural sound that might have been some form of speech, threw down the dismembered arm, and began to lope towards him with preternatural rapidity.

With a wordless shout Howard slammed the lock control on the door, sealing the hexagonal portal shut.  Half a moment later a loud thud resounded against the steel, followed by the sound of scraping talons and a low, sibilant snarl.

Howard turned and ran down the hall, towards the armory, boots pounding against the metal grating.  Down the corridor he caught a glimpse of some disturbance, of reality curdling as something began to manifest.  He didn't wait to see what it was, ducking through the open armory doorway.

Madly he began to reassemble one of his weapons, scrambling to find the right pieces and fit them together.  The ship shook again and pieces rolled and clattered.  In the hall, he could hear the click of clawed footsteps and the hoarse, moist exhalations of inhuman breath.

At last he managed to piece one of the pistols together.  A shadowy figure blocked the doorway, vague and menacing, as Howard desperately fumbled with a glyph-etched bullet.  His hands shook as he slotted the ammunition into his weapon.  The thing in the doorway bent its head low and lumbered inside, stooped, eyeless face turning this way and that, nostrils flaring.

Howard cocked back the hammer of his pistol.  The abomination's head swiveled towards the sound and it let out an obscene gasp of glee and ravenous hunger, preparing to pounce towards him.
The monstrosity's head exploded in a shower of yellowish fluid and foetid brains, spattering the walls with gobs of malodorous, inhuman gore.  Howard's pistol leaked bluish smoke.

He nearly vomited at the stench of the thing's charred remains.  The inside of the creature's head looked more like fungus than grey-matter.  The sickly, yellowish aura that had surrounded the monstrosity had gone out.

Shakily he got to his feet, just as a shrill shriek like an infant screaming echoed down the corridor, followed by spitting, hissing sounds.  Shaal!

Howard sprinted down the corridor to the engine room, loading his weapon with more ammunition snatched from the floor.  He found Zo's body sprawled across the threshold, her abdomen split neatly open, entrails and viscera spilling out in a steaming gush.  Shaalba was backed into a corner, hair bristling, waving a welding torch in front of her, keeping another of the eyeless horrors at bay.  Howard pumped three shots into its back, wrenching its malformed body around and around in a grotesque pirouette.  The creature stumbled against the wall and collapsed, screaming horribly, its elongated limbs flailing.  Howard emptied a fourth shot into its skull, snuffing out its glow like a candle.

"Iä!  Iä!  Bast damn me!"  The Ulthari woman hissed, her fur still standing on end.  "Dimensional Shamblers!"

"What in R'lyeh are they?"

"Inter-dimensional creatures... they lurk in the Outer Realms, latch onto any psychic energy they can find.  But you don't usually find them just wandering through hyperspace alone...

"Captain, we need to get to the cockpit.  Now."

Howard gulped and nodded.  He had two bullets left.  The pair stepped over Zo's corpse and back into the hall.

The air stank horrendously.  The chittering screams of the Byakhee down in the cargo bay emanated upwards.  Slowly they made their way up to the door at the end of the hall that Howard had sealed before.  Howard listened, but heard nothing but the ambient hum of The Unnameable – and, distantly, a rhythmic thrum, as of some distant, unimaginable drum.

"There was one beyond that door," he whispered to Shaalba.  "You unlock it—-I'll cover you."

Shaalba looked for a moment as if she would protest, but something in Howard's face must have defeated her trepidation, and she moved to the side of the door, ready to disengage the lock.  Howard aimed his pistol towards the door using both hands, legs wide apart, reading to shoot anything that lay beyond.

Shaalba input the door code and the portal slid open.  Howard tensed, ready to fire, but there was nothing beyond—-the creature was gone.

Together Shaalba and Howard entered the hall past the door, climbing the stair up to the cockpit, the Captain ahead, the Ulthari mechanic behind.

The pulsing thrum was louder here, an insistent throbbing beat accompanied by a high, lunatic piping like a diabolical flute.

"What is that?"  Howard asked, but Shaalba only shook her head and stared ahead.  They reached the top of the stairs.

Pnoth was sprawled in his chair, his cadaverous throat ripped out, eyes shocked and protuberant, blood trickling from his elbow where the Shambler had ripped off his arm.  A headset dangled from his patched leather chair.  The void beyond was obscured – the ghoul had put up the ship's blinders, blocking out the view of hyperspace outside.

"Where'd that Shambler-thing go?"  Howard wondered aloud, as he flicked at the dashboard console.  There appeared to be something wrong with the navigation system; none of the controls seemed to be working, save the switch to put down the blinders.

He handed Shaalba his weapon.  "Shaal, cover me while I get the override working, it'll take some--"

He stopped when he saw the expression on Shaalba's face.  She was staring, transfixed, out of the cockpit windows into the amorphous depths of hyperspace beyond.  Howard could see the blinders coming up in the reflection of her huge, slitted green eyes, and something past the blinders, out in hyperspace – something difficult to see.

Howard turned.

It filled the windows, filled the space beyond, incomprehensibly vast, bigger than the mind could hold.  A thousand mouths gnawed at the endless, eldritch dark with imbecilic hunger.  A million polypous limbs grasped at the tempestuous ether.  It went on forever.

It couldn't be.

It was the ravenous maw that gnashed inconceivably in the unlighted infinities between universes, in the illimitable abysses Outside of normal space, surrounded by a vile beat as of colossal drums, and an eternal shrill whistling as of fiendish pipes, and by the strange, terrifying dancers who swayed to the thing's incomprehensible rhythms.  And The Unnameable was heading ineluctably, unswervingly towards it.

It wasn't possible.

"Fm'latggh-'bthnk," Howard swore quietly.  "By the Elder Gods..."

More powerful than the Great Old Ones themselves.  The being to whom Nyarlathotep himself was a mere servitor.  Foremost of the Outer Gods.  The Nuclear Chaos.  The Daemon Sultan.  The Idiot God.
The infernal drumbeat made The Unnameable shake, made its reinforced and glyph-etched hull shudder and buckle.  The shrill, demoniacal melody of the flutes veined the cockpit windows with fine cracks.

The being reached out with one of its million multitudinous limbs.  It opened a gargantuan, slavering maw, a suckered orifice larger in breadth than a gas giant.  Enormous folds of alien flesh shifted and puckered, folding back to expose something huge and glistening beneath.

Inside, as the cracks propagated in the cockpit glass and the seething energies of uncanny dimensions began to leak into the ship, searing mundane reality like a corrosive acid, Howard stared out into a cyclopean eye the size of a star.

And Azathoth stared back.[/ic][/spoiler]

Now, here's the briefing for the scenario I'm going to run, and a list of characters to choose from (the crew).  Those who've played certain characters before can have dibs on their favourites, but in general anyone can play any character.  I'd highly suggest that someone picks Ramsay Olmstead and someone picks Father Blake, since this adventure involves the Hasturan religion and Deep Ones.

A Few Tentacles More

[ic=Briefing]The crew of the Demoiselle d'Ys, decommissioned Squamous Class frigate, have been facing tough times of late, months having passed without a solid contract.  Finally a job seems to have come your way – a Carcosan preacher has contacted you in desperation.  The man, named Eli Chambers, claims that his daughter has been kidnapped by a tribe of local Deep Ones and their "degenerate" half-human kindred.  The savages, as he calls them, have not asked for a ransom – they must have stolen her for some more sinister purpose.

The minister of Hastur dwells on Bethmoora, a backwater world at the edges of civilized space, in the ominously named town of Fort Sheol.  The Deep Ones have dwelt on this planet for millennia; it was not until a few decades ago that humans and other colonists arrived, lured by the promise of lost technology in certain ancient ruins on the surface of the world predating even the Deep Ones' habitation.  Since then, relations with the indigenes have been tense, with Deep Ones occasionally raiding offworlder settlements; in recent years, however, things have improved with the advent of trade agreements and treaties.  Strapped for cash and running dangerously low on fuel and food, you have travelled to Bethmoora to investigate the kidnapping and get the preacher's daughter back.

You won't be paid unless the preacher's daughter, Sonia, is returned safely to her father's care, with a bonus paid if you bring the kidnappers to justice.[/ic]
[ic=The Crew]Captain Gideon Carter

A grizzled veteran of the War of the Unfathomables, Captain Gideon Carter is haunted by the memories of uncanny battlefields where demoniac monstrosities summoned by the Xothic League's military obescenemancers gnawed half his platoon from the inside-out and phlegethon grenades consumed the rest with living fire.  His left arm – lost during a boarding action on a Xothic space station – has been replaced with a fungal prosthetic grown by Mi-go chirurgeons: a flexible, polymorphous thing which responds to his thoughts, twisting into virtually any shape he can think of.  Apart from this appendage Gideon is rather ordinary in appearance: a scarred, rather grim man in his early middle years, customarily clad in a purple duster, with a wide-brimmed hat shadowing his pocked, perpetually stubbled features.  His weapon of choice is a Headsman Model 7, a metaplasma-coil six-shooter – puissant cartridges being too bulky for a single firing cylinder, modern weapons technology (reverse engineered from Yithian weaponry) has reverted to a revolving chamber design.

Gideon is a dour, rather humourless fellow.  A staunch libertarian, he generally maintains a "live and let live" philosophy with regards to the various species and creeds of the galaxy – "I don't care if it walks, crawls, slithers, or scuttles, so long as it isn't trying to lay its eggs in my brain" – but he reserves a special hatred for the Polypous race after seeing the aftermath of their hideous specicide of a Mi-go colony during the early days of the War.  In his words, "The Tch-Tcho, Shan, Deep Ones, Ghouls – they may not look pretty, but they think like men, got a sense of right an' wrong, even if it's strange to you an' me.  They got a soul, if you believe in that sorta thing.  Li'hee syha'h n'ghft, the Polyps got no souls to speak of – no guilt, no remorse, no reason.  There's no dealing with things like that save with a loaded gun."

After the War, Gideon dug the Demoiselle d'Ys out of a scrap heap and refurbished her by selling spoils he gleaned from the sack of Thuggon.  For awhile he attempted to find work as a trader, but gradually he drifted back into mercenary work, then into thief-taking.  Despite his bloody profession Gideon has a strict code of ethics to which he inflexibly adheres.  In essence, he refuses to kill innocents but shows no mercy against lawbreakers; he believes that all beings (with the exception of the Flying Polyps) are entitled to their own place in the galaxy; and he believes unflinchingly in the importance of freedom, provided it is not abused.

Gideon's preferred drink is terrestrial whiskey (a flask of which he always keeps on his person).  He has a phobia of cats, and subsequently finds Ulthari rather unsettling.  Though not a religious man he occasionally mouths a prayer or two to Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss.

Ramsay Olmstead

One-quarter Deep One, Ramsay Olmstead is a mercenary employed by Captain Gideon Carter.  A hulking brute in appearance, Ramsay is something of a gentle giant: when not pursuing criminals he is partial to chess (playing countless games of it with Father Blake) and cooking – especially shellfish.  Ramsay is well over six feet and has a belly to match his height; though at first glance he looks human enough, closer inspection reveals that he possesses fully functional gills, slightly webbed digits, and rather protuberant eyes with large pupils, as well as a slightly greenish-grey skin tone.  A proficient brawler, Ramsay prefers pugilism and wrestling to ranged combat, though he is quite skilled with the Enoch & Curwen Combat Shotgun he typically carries – a rather antiquated weapon which fires solid shot rather than metaplasmic projectiles.

Unlike many "half-breed" Deep Ones, Ramsay is extremely proud of his aquatic heritage.  Openly worshipping Father Dagon, Mother Hydra, and Great Cthulhu (even going so far as to keep a small shrine to the these deities in his quarters, complete with clay figurines), Ramsay bears a tattoo of the Sleeping God's mantra – Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn – round his right bicep and a symbol of the Esoteric Order of Dagon on his chest.  Often he can be heard croaking ritual prayers in his cabin, imitating the burbling intonation of purebred Deep Ones.  He goes swimming at every chance; during the long voyages through space, when swimming is impossible, he spends hours in the bath, using up much of The Demoiselle's hot water in the process (to Gideon's perpetual annoyance).  During these marathon dips he incessantly blares Deep One heavy metal, which he claims to find soothing.  His favourite band is called Idh-Yaa: posters of the all-female Deep One punk-metal thrashers, ironically clad in shredded retro swimwear, cover his walls.

Born in a Deep One reservation on Whatley's World, Ramsay left to make his fortune many years ago, but he still keeps in regular contact with his grandmother, sending frequent hyperspace messages to her.  He met Gideon in a saloon: a pair of xenophobic humans, members of the Unsullied Brotherhood, had been tormenting him, mocking his drink of vodka and brine, threatening him, and taunting him with racial slurs.  Ramsay broke the nose of the first Antidegenerationist and was about to deal with the second when the sneering man pulled a Harlequin Metaplasma Derringer on him, insisting that he leave immediately.  Gideon – who'd observed the entire affair from a shadowy corner of the bar – simply shot the bigoted man in the foot.  While Ramsay retrieved the Derringer the scarred aethership captain proceeded to stride across the bar and stick his gun down the wounded man's throat, warning him that if he ever hassled any "subbies" (subhumans, as the Antidegenerationists term Ghouls, Deep Ones, and the like) in his hearing again, he'd blow the man's brains out.  Since the incident Gideon and Ramsay became fast friends – even if Gideon can't stand Ramsay's taste in food or music.

Apart from his odd friendship with Father Blake, Ramsay has a definite crush on Sthena, the ship's Yithian-possessed mechanic and tech specialist, though she is totally oblivious to his interest.

Father Blake

Perpetually clad in yellow robes and a pallid mask and bearing a silver flute, Father Blake is a lama of a beneficent aspect of Hastur.  The priest pays his own way on Captain Gideon's ship; though he claims that his funds are derived entirely from alms, he seems to possess unusual wealth and has, in certain emergencies when the crew's funds were especially short, paid for repairs to the ship or covered medical expenses for other crewmen.  He follows the bounty hunters of the Demoiselle in order to scrawl the Yellow Sign on the foreheads of criminals killed by the group, consigning their souls to the care of the King in Yellow with a tune from his flute.  He often converses with captured criminals being brought by the bounty hunters for trial, apparently in an attempt to reform them.  These sessions are intensely private, held in the Demoiselle's holding cell: Father Blake calls them "confessions."

Despite worshipping what many regard as a deity of madness and unspeakable horror – an interpretation Blake obviously regards as extremely skewed – the good Father seems to be a kind, reasonable man.  He is partial to the occasional game of chess, a taste he shares with Ramsay; the two often have intense spiritual debates over these games.  He gets along passably well with Sthena but is mercilessly teased by the sardonic pilot of the Demoiselle d'Ys, Richard Xu and distrusted by the ship's sawbones, Doc Tenebrous.  He spends most of his time in his own quarters studying from the small library of theological texts and grimoires he keeps with him.  At times strange lights emanate beneath the cracks of his door, and he seems to be speaking with someone.  When pressed about this he claims to simply be recording messages for his fellow lamas at St. Haita's Monastery on the third moon of Haddath, or listening to their messages.

Though Father Blake prefers not to kill unnecessarily he is a decent enough shot, wielding a pair of Strigoi M13 Micropistols.  He always carries with him a copy of the New Carcosan Bible (which includes the controversial play The King in Yellow as one of its scriptural books), whose eldritch formulae he sometimes invokes when witchcraft is required, though he is somewhat reluctant in the role of "miracle-worker," Captain Gideon's wishes aside.

Sthena

Six years ago, Sthena "Naughty Angel" Murdoch was an exotic dancer on Cythera, living paycheque to paycheque and making her living in the fleshpots.  While giving a client – a wealthy sulphur-refinery owner, in fact – a private dance, Sthena collapsed into unconsciousness, her eyes rolling into the back of her head.  The owner was alerted and, believing Sthena to be suffering from an overdose of the highly illegal pleasure-drug known as Ishtar's Tears, conducted her into a backroom, where she shortly revived.  Upon awaking from her stupor, however, Sthena was oddly changed: her voice, mannerisms, body language, and facial expressions were all subtly but distinctly altered, and she seemed to have no memory of her own past.  Looking down at her risqué outfit and raising an eyebrow, she informed the club owner that she would no longer be requiring employment at his establishment and briskly walked out, still unclothed, into the street.  Shortly after, she departed Venus to explore the rest of civilized space.

Sthena is, of course, no longer Sthena: she has been possessed by one of the Great Race of Yith, a being projecting its consciousness forward through time in order to record future history and make certain observations regarding the shape of events and the development of culture.  While this phenomenon is now well-documented, Yith-possessed individuals are often rounded up by many of the galaxy's governments and research centers, locked in phase-cells to prevent their consciousness' return to its own time, and then interrogated (sometimes forcibly) in order to extract valuable technological and occult knowledge – knowledge the Yith are reluctant to surrender, given their time travel protocols (what they refer to as "Chronological Etiquette").  Wishing to avoid this fate, Sthena has fallen in with Captain Gideon Carter and his crew – what better way to experience galactic society than with a crew of vagabonds?  While Gideon and the rest of the crew know her true nature, they conceal this secret from others.  Since Sthena possesses incredibly extensive knowledge of Yithian technology (the very technology on which modern hyperspace drives are modeled) she makes a perfect mechanic and engineer.  The engines of the Demoiselle d'Ys run with perfect smoothness, and in fact Sthena has made a few small but significant alterations to the vessel to improve efficiency.

Physically, Sthena appears as an extremely attractive human woman in her early twenties.  She cut her host's long red hair and keeps it very short.  Erotic tattoos cover most of her body, including a pair of prominent black angel wing tattoos on her back, quotes from the Song of Solomon along her right inner thigh, and a R'lyehian "tramp stamp."  She has swapped the contacts her host used for a pair of very large horn-rimmed glasses.  Intellectually, Sthena is a genius by human standards, fully versant in over fifty languages and adept with almost any form of reverse engineered Yithian tech, which seem as children's playthings to her.  Insatiably curious and wry of wit, Sthena sometimes makes embarrassing faux pas, as she is still not fully versed in the niceties of modern etiquette.  Though the Yith have an extensive knowledge of history, their accounts are incomplete, and so Sthena frequently makes anachronistic references.

Sthena is also a capable martial artist.  Her weapon of choice is a "lightning gun" which she built herself out of miscellaneous bits and pieces; though it takes several seconds to charge up, its effect is devastating, though it is not capable of pinpoint accuracy.  Aboard the ship her closest associate is Doc Tenebrous, whose stories she finds fascinating: often she can be found in the medical bay, pestering him for tales of the past.

Richard Xu

The curmudgeonly pilot of the Demoiselle d'Ys, Richard Xu is an old friend of Captain Gideon Carter.  During the War of the Unfathomables Richard worked principally as a drop-ship pilot, ferrying troops into battle, including Gideon's platoon.  During a disastrous engagement on Shohni Richard heroically remained behind after other pilots had retreated, waiting to pick up Gideon's squad.  Gideon and half a dozen men appeared out of the miasmic mists, slavering monstrosities in hot pursuit.  Richard managed to collect the remnants of Gideon's squad but was hit in the abdomen by a festershell, an infectious bullet which releases necrotizing bacteria into the wound it creates.  Richard stoically returned the ship and the wounded soldiers within back to the Righteous Leviathan in orbit over Shonhi – without informing Gideon or anyone else that flesh-eating bacteria were rapidly putrefying his body.  By the time they arrived at the medical bay it was too late: Richard's internal organs were on the verge of disintegration.

Fortunately for Richard, the Righteous Leviathan had a Mi-go medic aboard.  The chirurgeon scooped the pilot's brain from his skull moments before the gangrenous infection could reach it.  While the emergency surgery permanently damaged Richard's brainstem in such a way that his brain could never be transplanted into a new organic body, it did save the pilot's life.  Richard Xu's brain was placed in a Mi-go canister fitted with the requisite mechanical accoutrements necessary for speech and sensory input.  Because of his sacrifice Richard was decorated with almost every medal of bravery the Sovereigntist military could award and given an honourable discharge.  When the War ended Gideon sought Richard out and found the former pilot testing simulators for a major software company, having been rejected for employment as an actual pilot due to disembodiment prejudice, an unfortunately common perception that the bodiless are irreparably handicapped.  Offering his old war buddy the chance at actually flying again, Gideon brought Richard aboard the Demoiselle d'Ys.  His brain canister was wired directly into the ship's circuitry, allowing Richard to pilot it by thought.

When the crew of the Demoiselle are out on a mission, Richard "accompanies" the group using a remotely controlled automaton while his brain canister remains on the ship.  This heavily customized android, dubbed "Mr. Rusty" by Richard, vaguely resembles a mechanical humanoid crossed with a spider (six arms, two legs) and is fully equipped with audio/video receptors and even basic weapons (a taser and a small metaplasma-coil pistol).  It also contains a selection of tools, allowing Richard to jack into any computer systems the group encounters, sometimes enabling him to disable security systems or unlock doors.

Temperamentally, Richard is an extremely grumpy individual.  He possesses a snarky, caustic sense of humour and an incredibly foul mouth, and can swear fluently in three languages.  Only Gideon gets along well with Richard: the other crewmen tend to find him exasperating in the extreme.

Doc Tenebrous

The sawbones now known only as Doc Tenebrous was born on Rhode Island in 1882; born into a prosperous middle-class family, he following in his father's footsteps to become a skilled physician, eventually serving as a volunteer combat medic during the First World War.  After being critically injured by a stray German bullet and left for dead in the middle of a storm, he crawled into a cave (its walls scrawled with strange cave paintings) somewhere in eastern France and fell into unconsciousness.  When he awoke he found himself deep underground, surrounded by bizarre, vaguely humanoid creatures with horrible dog-like faces and pallid skin.  Though these beings – Ghouls – nursed him back to health, they refused to let him leave the caverns: he might alert the upper world to their presence.  The Ghoul warren was deep beneath the surface: there was no way the he could find his own path through the labyrinth of lightless tunnels.  Though at first he longed for his old life, eventually the man who would become Doc Tenebrous resigned himself to a subterranean existence.

As he recovered from his wounds, he realized that a curious change was overcoming him.  His nails were hardening and elongating rapidly; his skin was becoming pale and rubbery, almost cadaverous; his ears were becoming pointed, his teeth sharp, his eyes bloodshot.  When he pressed his healers about this alarming transformation they confessed the truth: his wounds had been so severe that he required a blood transfusion.  With no human blood available, the Ghouls had substituted their own.  Fed on a diet of Ghoul food, with Ghoul blood now flowing through his veins, he was slowly becoming a Ghoul himself.

Centuries later, when the greater human population became aware of their troglodytic cousins, Doc Tenebrous emerged from the dark corners of the earth with his Ghoul brethren.  The assimilation process was slow and fraught with violence – as it continues to be.  Doc Tenebrous sought solace in the depths of space, serving as a medic on a variety of ships.  Eventually he was hired on by Captain Gideon Carter after the veteran saw him operate on a shooting victim in the aftermath of a duel on Mars.  Suitably impressed with the Ghoul's skills, Gideon offered him a position aboard the Demoiselle d'Ys on the spot, and Doc Tenebrous has served with him ever since.

In appearance, Doc Tenebrous resembles a typical Ghoul: a hybrid of slouching proto-human and hairless dog.  He has immaculate dress sense, usually wearing a waistcoat and trousers (cut to accommodate his hoofed, bowed legs) and a bowler hat.  A superb shot, second only to Captain Gideon himself, his preferred weapon is a Lloigor Mk VII metaplasmic revolver, which he claims reminds him of the old Webley service pistols employed at the turn of the nineteenth-century.  Cerebral and rather stiff in manner, the Doc keeps to his small medical bay when not out in the field with the rest of the crew.  His reserved demeanour is balanced by his intense courteousness and chivalry.  He is, of course, well over four hundred years old, and so has extremely extensive firsthand knowledge of history.  His favourite poet is Alfred Lord Tennyson, whom he is fond of quoting.

Ashley Crow

Once a well-respected, even legendary lawwoman with the New Arkham police force, former Sheriff Ashley Crow was dismissed from service after shooting an undercover Delta Viridian agent.  At the time she believed Agent Aleistor Crucian to be a Shan-possessed fanatic attempting to open a multidimensional gateway to summon Xada-Hgla, an avatar of Azathoth, when in fact he was on the verge of exposing a major witch-cult.  To this day she suspects that she was set up, that someone wanted her off the force for good.  Whether or not some conspiratorial faction engineered her downfall, the incident cost Ashley her badge; she turned to bounty hunting since catching criminals is all she knows.  Some on the Anti-Aberrance Squad (Crow's old squad, which deals with occult crimes) have suggested that Crow saw too much, that the job drove her mad: they insist that the entire Delta Viridian incident was the result of Crow's paranoia getting the better of her.

Originally a rival of Captain Gideon Carter's, Ashley Crow fell in with the seasoned thief-taker after temporarily pooling resources with him to apprehend the notorious serial killer Gilbert Martense III, the "Cannibal of Kingsport": the two realized that they made an effective team, and Ashley has been a member of the Demoiselle's crew ever since.  A tall, statuesque woman in her mid-thirties with prematurely silver hair and hard, slate-grey eyes, Ashley Crow is striking, but she carries herself as if unaware of her appearance.  She frequently fidgets with the Anathema M-23 eight-shot pistol at her waist, though her weapon of choice is a Bugbear Model 5 metaplasma carbine.

Stern and rather curt, Ashley has had a huge chip on her shoulder ever since her dismissal.  A naturally suspicious woman, Ashley is a staunch maltheist and considers any form of religious worship foolish and potentially dangerous.  For this reason she frequently quarrels with Father Blake and Ramsay, constantly insisting to Gideon that their reverence will one day "get everyone onboard mind-raped, mutilated, and killed – possibly not in that order."  Richard Xu constantly makes obscene sexual comments regarding Ashley as well.  She does, however, get along passably with Doc Tenebrous and Sthena, and she seems to share some kind of largely unspoken bond with Captain Gideon.

Apart from being an excellent gunfighter, Ashley Crow is a skilled criminologist and has contacts throughout the occult underground.  Her police intuition is superb, her observation skills excellent, and she is highly resourceful in dire situations.  Her sole hobby is jigsaw puzzles, one of which is almost always half-completed in her quarters.

Sakhr – Created by Coyote Camouflage

Sakhr is a name from ancient Earth Arabic which translates to "solid rock". This moniker is quite apt, for Sakhr is a being composed entirely of Taconite. At a glance, Sakhr is easily mistaken for a golem-- he is a large being, his shape highly reminiscent of a winged, humanoid canine. His eyes appear to be peridots. Due to the nature of his form, flight of any kind is impossible-- the wings exist only as an apparent vanity, and Sakhr claims that he wears them by choice, despite their limited functionality.

Sakhr is tight-lipped about his real name, claiming that such knowledge is dangerous, and also part of the reason he is here. Anyone both curious and capable of civil discourse learn that Sakhr is from somewhere within the Dreamlands, though precisely what he is remains an enigma he is more than pleased to perpetuate for his own entertainment. He claims that he was rudely summoned by a being that wished an appropriately capable and ferocious guardian. Sakhr apparently fulfilled this role, except that he did not desire to do it, proving that he was more inclined to have a polite discussion and tea than he was to rend someone into small pieces. An error in judgment led to the vain summoner failing to understand the difference between capability and desire.

Sakhr likes this realm, however, and he is not quite so eager to return home as most other summoned entities often are. The reason for this is very simple, but also peculiar: Food. Sakhr-- whatever he is-- has no genuine need for sustenance in his home, but here, he is forced to ingest substances to maintain himself. He has taken quite the fancy to the delicacies he has tried-- finding very few not to his liking. Most such examples were either of completely inedible things, or so putrid and rotten that no sane creature would try to eat them. Sakhr has, however, demonstrated a natural skill towards cooking. And bartending. Were his appearance not so innately terrifying to most normal beings, he would most likely have little difficulty finding employment. Despite the fact that Sakhr functions well as a garbage disposal of sorts, he appears to have no small skill in a kitchen, capable as he is of providing exciting and intriguing delicacies. When Gideon can afford to keep the galley well-stocked, at least.

Sakhr was brought to the ship - and Gideon's attention-- by Sthena, who had found something "really neat" that she didn't know about and wanted to show off. Despite his initial alarm, Gideon's policies meshed well with Sakhr's own temperament, and the two quickly found respect for the other. After a short discussion and demonstration of his uses, Sakhr was brought on board as both cook and occasional bullet-proof shield. Sakhr set himself up in the ship's galley-- working himself to add in a reliable bar to the mix. He functions as the ship's cook and bartender, and, if truly needed, another hand in a fight. Sakhr finds violence crude and unpleasant, despite being singularly capable in hand-to-hand combat. He has no ability with firearms at all. Instead, he prefers conversation, be it casual or formal in tone or material, and there is a kind and eager listener behind his fearsome face.

Sonam "Sonya" Choden

Though she does not look it, Sonam Choden – or "Sonya" as she prefers to call herself – is of pure tcho-tcho origin, able to trace her ancestry back to the original terrestrial tribes of Central Asia and, ultimately, to the primordial Miri-Nigri themselves.  Raised in a traditional tcho-tcho household, Sonya became disillusioned with her culture after her twin older brothers were killed in a turf-war between two rival Tongs in the Chauchatown of Moloch City.  She ran away from home, stowing away on a hyperfreighter heading to the frontier and becoming a pickpocket, burglar, and con artist, wandering from town to town, planet to planet, system to system.  She cut her nails and kept them well-pruned; she let her hair grow out of its original bowl cut and dyed it blonde; when she could afford to she had a chirurgeon replace her filed teeth with regular ones; she renounced worship of Chaugnar Faugn, Atlach-Nacha, the Twin Obscenities, and the other Great Old Ones revered by many of her people.  She ate synthetic human flesh coded with double alleles in the HMGA2 gene and suffered excruciating growing pains as her tcho-tcho metabolism assimilated the DNA and pushed her height from 4'3" to 5'1".  With agonizing slowness she transformed herself from a fanged pygmy into a still-petite but unremarkable young woman.  When a con required her to change herself further she would consume the appropriate genetic material, adopting a temporary visage to alter her genetic makeup.

Some years ago Captain Gideon was bringing Sonya in after the skilled thief stole an extremely valuable electromagnetic pulsed microwave weapon from a private collector.  On the way back to the ship the Captain was ambushed by a group of Ghoul thugs in the warrens of Nova Stygia.  Having disarmed Gideon, the Ghouls prepared to divest him of his valuable possessions: his weapons, clothes, money, skin, and vital organs.  Ignoring the handcuffed Sonya for the time being two of the slavering creatures approached while the third kept watch.  Though Gideon had handcuffed her with her hands behind her back, Sonya's tcho-tcho flexibility allowed her to easily reposition her arms round the front.  She crept up to the Ghoul standing guard, strangled him quietly using her chains as an improvised garrotte, picked up his weapon, and shot the remaining two Ghouls through the backs of their heads.  During this time Gideon reclaimed his own weapon; the two now faced a Mexican standoff.  Complimenting Sonya on her skills and thanking her for saving his life Gideon offered to tell the authorities she'd been killed during apprehension – if she joined his crew.  After a brief moment's hesitation Sonya accepted Gideon's proposal.

Since that day Sonya has been an on-again-off-again crewmember of the Demoiselle d'Ys.  She has her own hyperspace-capable ship, the Cacodaemon Class vessel Dream of Hyperborea, which she typically docks in one of the Demoiselle's spare shuttle bays while she is aboard.  Often she will come aboard the ship and work a few jobs while on the run from lawmen in another system (usually unbeknownst to Gideon), then leave once she grows bored.  Stealthy, nimble, and well-versed in the dynamics of the underworld, Sonya can be a valuable addition to the team.  She has an extensive array of criminal contacts and is a decent shot with the Morella Model 4 Pocket Pistol she always carries, though she prefers to dispatch foes quietly using knives and garrottes when she has to kill anyone, and further prefers to sneak past, trick, or otherwise disable enemies rather than killing them.

Hadrian Saxon-Sorne - created by The Meanest Guest

An ex-corporate marine formerly in the employ of the Thiessen-Suwei Corporation, Hadrian has extensive combat experience. He has participated in excess of two dozen boarding actions, been dropped in five orbital landings, and served aboard ship in two fleet-scale engagements during the Inner Lane War. Hadrian is rarely separated from his black plasteel suit of Thiessen Advanced Encounter Armour, being accustomed to its wear during long space voyages. His eyes are slate grey, and he keeps his blond hair cropped short in a military style. His complexion is unmarred by scar or burn in spite of all the battle he has seen, thanks in large part to the excellent aesthetic surgery package offered under Thiessen-Suwei's corporate health plan. Hadrian has been regarded as an exceptional marksman throughout his career, often serving as the designated sharpshooter in the various units he has been assigned to. He downplays his own contribution to his unerring shot, instead lauding his 5S MPR: a battle rifle from Suwei's back catalogue, it's design over two centuries old, and so archaic that it relies on magnetically accelerated solid ammunition. Apart from his rifle, Hadrian only carries an 8" Henrick V-Edge vibroknife, and a single NCORE fusion grenade that he refers to as his 'party favour'.  In addition to his skill with weapons Hadrian is an accomplished operator of terrestrial vehicles, having driven assorted tanks, APCs, and a myriad list of other military and civilian vehicles both under fire and in all kinds of inclement weather conditions.

Born in Providence City in the Betelgeuse system, the third of three children. Hadrian's parents divorced soon after he was born. He never knew his father, and he grew up largely ignored by his mother, Anne-Elizabeth. The task of raising him fell to his two older sisters: Theodora and Valentine. Hadrian loves his sisters dearly, and to this day maintains near-constant contact with them. The once-great cities of Yarnak were already mostly deserted by the time he was born, and only continued to empty and decay as he grew up. At the conclusion of his second year studying politics at the Royal College of Providence, his education was cut short. The university was forced to close its doors due to insufficient enrollment. His family's ancient fortune now dwindled to near-nothingness, finishing his studies off-world was not an option, and so, Hadrian stumbled into gainful employment in the ranks of the Thiessen-Suwei Marines.

Relaxed and generally cheerful, Hadrian gets along well with most people. The horrors he has seen do not seem to bother him, or he at least hides it well behind his easy smile. He has a passion for classical music, and can often be found with a guitar on his lap strumming out the songs of old Earth. He's surprisingly well read for an ex-corporate merc, and if he isn't playing guitar you can bet there will be a book in his right hand, and a glass of Martian bourbon in his left.  

Since the expiration of his six year contract with Thiessen-Suwei, Hadrian has found himself sporadically employed by Ptolem AG, one of the few private security firms still based out of Yarnak. Most recently he was assigned to provide shipboard security for the notoriously draconian Tasty Fruit company aboard the Wallowing Rex: a hauler carrying over three million tonnes of sweet plantains. Surrounded by an eery crew of Ghouls that didn't seem to speak a word of English, and enjoying the oh-so-pleasant conversation of the two obsolete SparTech Warhawk combat drones that Ptolem had sent with him, it was probably the only time in his life that he really wanted to kill himself. He almost found it relieving when the crew mutinied, tied him up in his sleep, killed and ate the ship's officers in front of him, and dumped him wide-eyed and bewildered in the middle of the back-end of nowhere: some rancher's field on Mandra-fucking-gora. But really, the fun was just getting started.[/ic]

I'd love to play as Richard Xu if that's possible and if you'll have me. :)

I'm absolutely in to reprise my role as Hadrian.

I'm down I think, depending on my schedule, of course. Are new, episodic characters welcome? [edit: if it's more trouble than it's worth, I can pick up any character still open, no big deal.]

I may or may not have Rocky Horror that night, but if I don't, I'd love to play Crow. And if I am busy, could I, like Leetz asked, play an episodic character if the game runs for more than one session?

Similar to others, my plans around Halloween are somewhat in flux. That said, if I'm available I'd be keen to play Father Blake.

Episodic characters are OK if none of the pre-existing characters appeal to you - just run a character past me quickly by PM.  The crew is getting pretty big, though, and the ship can't fit too many more characters, so if one of the pregens sounds fun to you, I'd recommend just going for it (feel free to make them your own as you play them - the bios are just a starting point).  If you do decide to create a new character, my suggestions are to try and include an element of the three genres in your character: so have a Western element, a science fiction element, and a Lovecraftian/Mythos element, if at all possible.

Actually, I'll make it easy and take Doc Tenebrous if that's fine with everyone.

So far it looks like we have:

Richard Xu - Nomadic
Hadrian Saxon-Sorne - Themeanestguest
Doc Tenebrous - Leetz
Ashley Crow - Superbright (maybe)
Father Blake - HippopotamusDundee (maybe)

Also I talked with sparkle and she said she was up for playing her character again (Sthena I think). So that gives us 4-6 players, quite a handful :)

Looks good.  If Xathan is around and would like to play Gideon, and/or if Ghostman would like to play Ramsay (or if either of them would like to try new characters), they're both also welcome to join, of course.

I definitely want to get on board. Will need to give some thought on what character to play.

I just realized that this game will take place on a Wednesday night which makes it impossible for me to make so I'm going to have to back out. Kind of sucks too because Wednesday is the first night of the week I work so the game just happens to catch the very edge of my work schedule.

Too bad :(.  When do you get off work??

If Nomadic has to back out, that would definitely leave a spot open for another player if they'd like.

what's the exact time we are looking at? I should be able to make it, but between work and school, I can't make any promises.

Well, that's a discussion worth having.  What're the earliest times people are available?  I''m free from around 1:30 EST onwards.